U.S. Pat. No. 3,023,991, issued to J. Fisher in 1962, discloses a towel bar or similar hanger that is securable to an upright supporting surface without the use of screws, nails or the like. It comprises an elongated strip of magnetically permeable metal that is bent along its length to an L-shaped transverse section to have an upright main portion and a forwardly projecting flange extending all along the bottom edge of the main portion. The rear surface of the main portion is coated with adhesive to provide for securement of the strip to an upright supporting surface. A pair of horseshoe magnets having rearwardly projecting legs are magnetically adhered to the front surface of the main portion, one near each end of it, and these magnets cooperate to support a hanger rod in forwardly spaced relation to the strip, the rod being received in the loops of the horseshoe magnets. The forwardly projecting flange on the strip defines a shelf-like ledge that limits downward sliding of the magnets.
In this prior structure the rod and the magnets that support it are of course very readily attachable to the metal strip and detachable from it. Because of its adhesive coating, the metal strip can be attached easily enough to an upright supporting surface. But removal of the strip can present annoying problems because the adhesive coating material necessarily clings to the supporting surface as well as it does to the metal strip, and therefore some of that material inevitably remains on the supporting surface when the hanger is taken down, leaving an unsightly blemish that is hard to clean away.
It often happens that there is a need for a towel bar or similar hanger in a kitchen--and especially in a small kitchen--but there is no suitable wall space on which to mount it. In such cases there is almost always a range, refrigerator or cabinet that presents an accessible upright wall for the mounting of the hanger, but of course the use of screws or the like on such a surface would be out of the question, and the use of an adhesive on it would be undesirable.
It is perhaps obvious in principle that magnetic attachment of a towel hanger to an upright metal wall would satisfy the requirements, but the practical problem that this expedient presents is suggested by the provision of the ledge-like forwardly projecting flange on the metal strip of the above described prior hanger, which was needed to limit downward sliding of the horseshoe magnets. In short, mounting security is the problem with magnetic attachment, and that problem is a severe one because the attachment must not only support the weight of the hanger itself and of a large wet towel that may be hung on it but must also be able to support the further downward force exerted by a person who pulls the towel off of the hanger by its bottom edge. Even if a magnetic attachment prevents the hanger from being pulled off of the wall, it cannot be satisfactory unless it securely restrains the hanger against sliding down and across the wall. Horseshoe magnets such as suggested by the Fisher patent, and magnets of generally similar conventional configurations, would have to be unduly large to provide enough magnetic force to resist sliding, and accordingly they would have to be bulky, unsightly and expensive.